This book was so gripping that once I began reading it I could not put it down for any other pursuit and finished it in little more than a day. It was so stirring to my heart and senses while at the same time deeply disturbing in the fact that it is so possible in the chaos of our current political climate in the US vs Russia, China, or Korea. Those being our foreign enemies if we first do not tear ourselves apart internally It would be frightening beyond compare to be thrown back 200 years with no foreseeable rescue and few people with the skills or knowledge around to help a community survive. I am 44 and thankfully was taught and raised as a child in a "fronteir" camping fraternity on weekends and in the summers where you could use nothing but what the land around you provided. It was my father's hobby and he felt that at least his girls should have the basic survival skills. How many young people today or even folks of my generation would indeed know how to survive? This book addresses so many concerns while lightly sketching over radiation burns and fallout and those horrific problems. However, I highly recommend that in this present age of a generation who is largely unaffected, complacent and unaware of what it is truly like to face the threat of this all to real atomic age, we should in fact make this book a required reading in the curriculum for all high school students.

I read this book in 1967, at 13 years old. It held the realistic possibilities of the future, because i was in the generation of Civil Defense, Survival shelters dug in the back yard, and Knowing where the closest CD Shelters were in every nearby town. 50 some years have passed, and several wars fought, Oklahoma City and September 11th. The violent chaos in “ other countries” is now in our country. And the story told in this book is closer to becoming an actual reality than ever before.